Amazon faces criticism for allegedly destroying books to digitise them for AI training, raising concerns about the preservation of physical culture and the ethics of AI data sourcing.

Amazon is facing fresh scrutiny over the use of physical books for artificial intelligence training after an investigation reportedly tracked a shipment of hard-to-find titles to a company facility in Las Vegas, where workers allegedly cut the bindings from books before scanning their pages and eventually destroying them.

The investigation, reported by 404 Media, involved placing a tracking device inside a book from a large order and following its journey across the United States. The shipment ultimately reached an Amazon facility associated with an operation known as VGT3.

The discovery has raised concerns among booksellers, librarians and readers about what happens to physical books once they are acquired as potential sources of AI training data.

      • quakki@discuss.tchncs.de
        21·
        1 day ago

        How is this in any way comparable to that? The bad thing abt nazi book burning wasnt the destruction of physical copies of books, but the destruction of knowledge and their intent behind it

          • quakki@discuss.tchncs.de
            11·
            11 hours ago
            1. So the only scenario where your think makes sense if we have a seller with a book that is the only unit in existance and it is not digitized.
            2. The bad thing about nazi book burnings was the targetting of the books of political enemies and jewish authors. This isn’t the case here. They destroy at most one copy of any book across the board.
            • alapakala@quokk.auEnglish
              2·
              1 hour ago
              1. That’s what rare & H2F means
              2. Read point one, carefully. If the books weren’t rare, it wouldn’t have enemies, but more commonly copied. Like the Christian Bible.
          • degen@midwest.socialEnglish
            1·
            1 day ago

            I think their point is that scanning preserves the content rather than destroying it, but I’m guessing the scans aren’t exactly public.

            Destroying the original is flat out stupid from every angle unless it’s unavoidable or destruction (or taking control) is the goal.

            Honestly it might be worse if that’s not the idea, but yeah it’s still nazi coded at best

            • alapakala@quokk.auEnglish
              2·
              1 day ago

              the scans aren’t exactly public.

              Exactly.

              destruction (or taking control) is the goal.

              Every fascist regime’s is.

              nazi coded at best

              Now that you know, what are you going to do about this?